London Life

Give a little

Londoners donate £5.6 billion a year to charity and in the past decade there has been a rise in the number of people in business setting up their own charities. Celebrating the season for goodwill, Maxine Boersma talks to four entrepreneurs who are making a difference.

Sandra Schembri

Sandra Schembri is the CEO of The House of St Barnabas in Soho Square, a private members’ club that dates back to 1746 and which helps the homeless – the first ever not-for-profit club where the fees raised by members are diverted back to the charity. She has just been named as one of Natwest SE100’s Wise Women, a new initiative recognising 100 of the most inspiring and influential women in social enterprise, impact investment and social innovation.

The club’s Employment Academy enables the homeless to gain work experience and accredited training, building new skills and confidence. Each person has a mentor and the club collaborates with agencies

Crisis and St Mungo’s Broadway. During the 12-week Academy programme, people receive coaching, personal development advice and interview practice and also meet potential employers. Their mentor, from the membership base, will then support them for a year after they leave.

“The club is a social business”, Schembri explains. “We have around 2,500 members from fields as varied as media, banking, law, housing and the government. What they all have in common is a desire for social change. The club is a place where interesting conversations happen.”

Such conversations helped Thomas, “who, despite depression and challenges with his health, went on to complete the programme. With careful mentoring, he obtained better housing and his confidence grew. He is now working full-time at the Old Spike Roastery and is the face of a coffee brand.”

The club also helped Nadia who graduated from the Academy programme in August. “She was, kicked out of her family home more than five years ago. She is desperate to work and highly employable but cannot afford to lose the housing benefit that enabled her to keep a roof over her head. Through our partnership with Octavia Housing, we were able to suggest to Nadia that she move into a Soho flat which is let at an affordable level of rent.

“Now Nadia has moved in, she is able to search for work and is working with our Employment Support Officers to find the right role for her.”

“Our model challenges the idea that charity and luxury cannot coexist. We’re an organisation of many contradictions but it is the beautiful harmony they create together that brings a certain magic to our club and academy.

“Members’ clubs are by definition (and tradition) exclusive spaces. But our club sits on the line between exclusivity and inclusivity, enabling us to offer a sanctuary in the heart of Soho to our members, while opening our doors to the people we support and to others, as guests and as attendees of our public cultural programme.”

“If every business in the Square Mile was able to run an Employment Academy, even on a small scale, just think of the number of people we could support back in to work.”

Jermyn Street shirt-maker Emma Willis uses her tailoring skills to assist wounded soldiers who leave the army. Her Style for Soldiers charity, established in 2008, has model David Gandy as a patron. The Prince of Wales was guest of honour at her Christmas party last year, and clients for her bespoke shirts include Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Craig.

Willis’s interest came after hearing a Radio 4 programme in 2008. She went to meet soldiers at Headley Court military rehabilitation centre in Surrey. Many had joined the army at 17, with little education. Wounded abroad, they returned home with a war pension but a major injury and little promise of a job. Willis was struck by the soldiers’ devotion to their duty and lack of self pity. She realised that being dressed well endows confidence when walking into a room, for example, for a job interview.

“A customer introduced me to General Sir Philip Trousdell. We had lunch and Sir Philip then spoke to the then medical commanding officer at Headley, Jerry Tuck, who kindly agreed to give me a trial visit. I didn’t realise at the time but he watched in combats at a distance.”

She estimates she has now assisted 600 injured service personnel, plus their partners and children who are involved in the six reunion events each year.

“We do Velcro double cuffs with sewn in silk knot cufflinks for those with one arm who like to wear cufflinks for special occasions but find them too difficult if they have also lost fingers on their remaining arm.

“Or we make bespoke shoes, one bigger than the other, to accommodate leg braces and prosthetic feet, moulded round the foot shape as well as wider leg trousers to accommodate leg cages. We put extra heavy lining in trousers of prosthetic leg wearers as the metal joints rip through fabric very quickly.”

One ex-serviceman she helped is Shaun Stocker, 27, whom Willis met at Headley Court in 2012. He had lost his vision, both legs and several fingers in an improvised- explosive device blast.

“Shaun attended several Style for Soldiers parties in his wheelchair, and now speaks at our parties to huge, sophisticated audiences and his fellow injured servicemen and women, to motivate them.”

Among her thank-you letters is one from a serviceman who was involved in a suicide bomb attack in 2013 during his first tour of Afghanistan, aged 22. He experienced nerve damage as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. Willis gave him shirts, a suit, shoes and a smart regimental walking stick for his first job interview. He wrote, “I instantly noticed a change in me the minute I got dressed that morning. I felt rejuvenated and saw a glimpse of the person I was going to be shine through… You have done more for me than the hours of counselling have ever done.”

Willis says, “It is the greatest pleasure possible to be able to contribute something, however small, to the lives of our brave and selfless young servicemen and women, and their families.”

Australian-born chef Skye Gyngell trained in Sydney, then Paris, before moving to London, where she worked at The French House and The Dorchester. In 2004 she became head chef at Petersham Nurseries Café which gained a Michelin star.

A former Vogue cookery writer, Skye took over the restaurant Spring at Somerset House in 2015, where she is known for her seasonal British food. It is here that she will host TABLE this Christmas, a community eating house in collaboration with Streetsmart, a charity which fundraises for homeless people through the support of UK restaurants who display a reference on their menus. The Streetsmart code enables diners to donate £1 to the homeless from their meal.

TABLE will serve a traditional Christmas dinner for disadvantaged families, individuals and their support workers. Produce will be donated by the restaurant.

“As you get older, you look for different things in your work,” says Gyngell. “I remember Alice Waters of the Chez Panisse restaurant in California telling me to look at things in a ‘much bigger way’. I realise being in service is important and that recreating communities is too. There’s more to business than making money so I ask how my own business contributes to the community.

“Food is a wonderful way of bringing people together as so often they live in isolation. Everyone has a right to good, nutritious, food. I want to provide a real feeling of Christmas with food shared down the middle of the table. Asking someone to pass the red cabbage starts both a conversation and a community.

“The wider Somerset House community of 2,000 will be on hand to decorate Christmas trees and create Secret Santas. It is also great for my own team to give something back at this time of year.

“I live near Grenfell Tower,” she adds. “I could see it burning from my window and I realised what life in a hostel with three kids over Christmas would be like. I also see the homeless every day near my work and it’s important for people to feel part of something at this time.

“My TABLE menu will be very festive using seasonal donations from suppliers. There will be turkey or goose, perhaps with a loganberry sauce, all the trimmings and, of course, Christmas pudding with brandy butter or custard.”

TABLE at Somerset House will run for lunch service at 1.30pm daily from 19-22 December, with dinner service at 7pm on 21 and 22 December. The price for a three-course meal will be £45 with all proceeds going to Streetsmart.

Drew Goodall

Drew Goodall is the founder of Sunshine Shoeshine, a business which provides a shoe cleaning service for busy workers in their offices. The service usually counts as an employee benefit and the team of ‘Sunshiners’ or shoe cleaners, have loyal clients.

Four years on, there are now eight ‘Sunshiners’ and a business turnover of around £250k. Current clients of the Twickenham-based firm include Barclays Capital and EFG Private Bank.

Goodall’s employees are often homeless or people with special needs (due to the nature of the role, he does not employ people with addiction problems or those with a criminal conviction). After they are employed by Goodall, they can then save money for their own home. Goodall’s referrals for new staff mostly come from the Sunshiners themselves, although he says people rarely leave the firm.

Goodall’s business idea was inspired by his own rough sleeping. After moving from Ipswich to drama school in London, he appeared alongside Brad Pitt in the film Snatch but his world came crashing down when he received bad reviews for a theatre role. His confidence fell, he stopped work and ended up sleeping on floors.

“I slept rough in west London, even in A & E departments. I was also attacked. Luckily I wasn’t homeless during Christmas. The street is the street, whatever the time of year for the people there. It’s like Christmas is something others do.”

He adds that when you’re homeless, “There’s no future and no past, just now.”

Goodall recalls the moment he came up with the shoeshine idea. “I’d just met a woman who helped me get back a sense of self-worth. Then, I spoke to a passer-by, a businessman at Parsons Green, where I was sleeping rough, who said there was a market in cleaning shoes in the street for City workers. So, I did just that and charged £2 a time.”

The idea for his current business then evolved. “I hire people who are disadvantaged in some way,” he says, “they may be partially sighted or hard of hearing, for instance. I’d say I help people who can’t help themselves, ensuring they get the most out of the experience.

“We had a Sunshiner who was almost blind and had had a schizophrenic breakdown. With better medication and funds from his job, he paid for an operation on his eyesight. He has now moved on, but I like to think we did our bit in helping him there.”